Friday, May 7, 2010

Apple Moving Headquarters to Dubai

Concerned by the recent outing of the fourth generation iPhone prototype on tech blog Gizmodo, secrecy obsessed Apple is moving its headquarters to Dubai.

The Middle East emirate has long been known for its ultra luxe amenities, including an indoor snow resort and the world's largest man-made islands and the tallest building. But more recently, they were in the news for using their sophisticated security tracking system to determine that the death of a senior Hamas figure was carried out by a over a dozen Mossad agents, and was not as initially believed to be the result of natural causes.

The pairing of Apple and Dubai comes as the United Arab Emirate's most ostentatious city struggles to recover from the global downturn and attract foreign business. The deal to move the headquarters to Dubai came this past week after a visit by Steve Jobs and his associates, where they apparently stayed at a seven star hotel and ate in an underwater restaurant that they reached by submarine. But what sealed the deal, according to an employee of Dubai's sophisticated security system who declined to state his name for fear of death by firing squad, was a behind-the-scenes tour of the thousands of surveillance cameras that allow for the tracking of people. "It's more intrusive than Bill Gate's house," Jobs reportedly exclaimed in admiration.

Apple suffered great embarrassment after a software engineer left a prototype of the yet-to-be-released fourth generation iPhone at a bar in Redwood City, Calif., which was subsequently sold to Gizmodo for $5,000. The resulting video of an unshaven geek displaying the prototype went viral and led to mass hyperventilation of Apple groupies worldwide.

Using Dubai's tracking system, the man who found the iPhone would have been tracked down and jailed under trumped up charges before he had time to get home, said the employee. "There would be none of this legal nonsense over whether the search warrant was legal."

Apple has already begun relocating employees as well as making some local hires. Both groups will undergo intense cultural sensitivity training, with the former learning about verboten customs such as kissing in public and the latter learning to avoid speaking positively about Adobe Flash.